Home brewers turn their passion into businesses

Wednesday

Aug 27, 2014 at 7:45 AM

Home brewers of craft beer open a supply store and micro-brewery in Plymouth.

By Jody FeinbergThe Patriot Ledger

Tina Williams knows first hand the mistakes of novice home brewers, so she has plenty of advice and encouragement for customers of her new Plymouth home brew supply store.“I came into the kitchen and heard splashing and fizzing and there was this sugary mess all over my stove,” said Williams, describing her husband’s first attempt to make beer. “The biggest mistake people make is they don’t watch it closely enough.”

Williams didn’t plan to make a career around home brewing, but she got hooked nine years ago after she rescued her husband’s brew. Now, she regularly uses her own recipes to make five gallon batches and spends her days running Plymouth Home Brew Supply, which she opened in April.

“I love the creativity of making beer, and I love sharing it,” said Williams, 31, who recently made a barley wine aged with dates. “You could take one style and put 10 bottles in front of someone and no bottle is going to taste the same.”

Similarly, Paul Nixon became so devoted to brewing beer in his Plymouth home that he last spring turned a barn on his property into the small micro-brewery, Independent Fermentations.

“I’ve been asked, ‘why do you bother when there is so much great beer around?” said Nixon, 49, a civil engineer who brews beer on nights and weekends. “I enjoy trying to figure out how quality beer is made. I’ve developed a bunch of recipes and am always trying to use local ingredients and to change things up.”

Like wine and coffee, beer has a seemingly endless variety of tastes influenced by its ingredients – water, malt, hops and yeast – and preparation. Craft beer is defined as beer with distinctive, innovative flavors made in relatively small batches with high quality ingredients.

“The craft beer industry has exploded, and that’s had a huge impact on the increase in home brewers,” said Williams, a former restaurant manager who moved to Halifax last year. “People feel that the beer is so great they want to make it themselves.”

In recent years, Plymouth has become a destination for people who love craft beer, Nixon said. It’s a fitting identity for the home of the Pilgrims, who relied on beer for fluids and carbohydrates on their ocean passage.

At least half a dozen Plymouth bars and restaurants specialize in craft beer, and tours and tastings are regular draws at Mayflower Brewing Company, founded in 2007 by a 10th great grandson of John Alden, a beer barrel cooper on the Mayflower.

“We have two breweries, seven to nine bars downtown that serve a fantastic array of craft beers, and now the home brew shop,” said Nixon. “I see the town really coming along.”

In her well-lit, spacious shop with large bay windows near the Plymouth waterfront, Williams has created an environment that encourages browsing and brings out the aesthetics of beer making. Stored in hand-crafted maple bins with clear plastic shoots, the grains form a rainbow of earth tones and flavors, from “toasty biscuit to nutty caramel.”

“I want it to feel inviting, not like a warehouse,” said Williams, who estimates Plymouth will have more than 120 home brewers by 2016 based on membership in the Homebrewers Association and the town’s demographics. “Some supply stores can feel intimidating because of the industrial feel.”

Plymouth Home Brew Supply is the second supply store to open on the South Shore in recent years. South Shore Homebrew Emporium – a chain store – opened in Weymouth in early 2012.

Williams sells 60 kinds of grains that can be ground in the store, more than 50 strains of yeast, dozens of liquid and dried malt extracts, a wide range of hops, and all necessary equipment, including kits.

“When you do all grain brewing (where the brewer steeps the grains to extract the sugar), you have better control over the flavor of your beer,” said Williams, who offers home brewing classes in the store and will start a seminar series at New World Tavern in Plymouth. “But most people start with kits, which are a great way to start to make good beers and build up confidence.”

Williams believes the most important thing she offers is her vast knowledge and devotion to the craft.

“If customers have had a beer they enjoyed, I can help them come up with a recipe to create a similar one,” she said. “And they can bring me the beer they made, and I’ll talk to them about it. I can help them make a beer they will love.”

Williams can’t sell the beer she makes, since home brewers cannot legally sell beer. Eventually, she may seek to sell locally made beers, such as those made by Nixon’s micro-brewery, Independent Fermentation.

Nixon, who has more than 20 years of brewing experience and makes about 55 gallons a week, recently created a new beer that he calls Honey Tripel. It’s a Belgian monastery style tripel made with honey from Bourne. He distributes it to New World Tavern, Driftwood Publick House, Rye Tavern and other Plymouth bars and stores, and he will bring it to the Mass Brewers Festival on Aug. 29 in Boston, where dozens of local brewers will showcase more than 100 styles of beer.

Nixon now is looking for a larger location to expand his micro-brewery, which he hopes to eventually make into his full-time job.

“It’s been quite easy to sell 55 gallons a week,” Nixon said. “I started with places where I was a pretty steady customer. But now that we’re getting a reputation for having some tasty beer, people are starting to call me now and asking for my beer.”

Jody Feinberg may be reached at jfeinberg@ledger.com or follow on Twitter @JodyF_Ledger.